Tag Archives: international criminal court

Six months ago Israel was engaged in action which Nick Clegg described as ‘deliberately disproportionate’, killing over 2000 Palestinians – many of them women and children – and the lives of 70 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

During the war Nick said that nothing would be solved without talking. And now’s a good time to remind Israel’s PM Benyamin Netanyahu about that, especially given events since then.

Like Britain, Israel will have elections, in March. The parties are trying to outdo each other on security. Recently the right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said that “A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable.” With views like that, the likelihood of negotiations being restarted – let alone a peace deal being achieved – is extremely remote.

A good justice system both dispenses justice and is seen to do so. That makes the appointment of Gambian Fatou Bensouda as the International Criminal Court’s new Chief Prosecutor particularly welcome.

Bensouda is the first African to hold the post of Chief Prosecutor, an important step in helping the ICC maintain the confidence of African countries given how often Africans are up before the ICC.

The ICC’s remit is not limited to Africa and nor are the atrocities it can investigate confined to one part of our globe, but in practice a very high proportion of the International Criminal Court’s high profile cases recently …

The Financial Times reports, “A loophole in the schemes used by wealthy earners to transfer pensions overseas was blocked on Wednesday in a move the Treasury said showed its determination to crack down …

As people across North Africa and the Middle East rise up against their oppressive regimes, the international community is preparing to let Sudan’s dictator, Field Marshall Omar Bashir, off the hook for killing millions of his own citizens.

In 2009 the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Bashir for genocide in Sudan’s remote western region of Darfur where his policy of ethnic cleansing led to the deaths of 300,000 people. For years Khartoum used the same tactic, arming poor Arab nomads to kill their black Africa neighbours to similar effect in South Sudan, where an estimated two million died. …

In another important step for the International Criminal Court (ICC), on Wednesday its prosecutor announced charges against six high-profile Kenyans, including the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta. The charges all relate to the violence that killed 1,200 people after disputed elections in 2007:

BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says in recent days there has been a degree of panic among some members of the usually untouchable political elite.

Most Kenyans feel these prosecutions are vital in order to undermine the deeply rooted culture of impunity, our correspondent says.